A cruiser named Peter the Great, containing guided-nuclear missiles, and an antisubmarine vessel named Admiral Chabanenko were among the Russian ships that set sail for Venezuela on Monday, according to The New York Times. The Russian Navy indicates that the ships will participate in joint manuevers with the Venezuelan military in November. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will also travel to Russia this week for his second visit in two months.

Tensions among the United States, Venezuela and Russia have escalated recently, as the latter two countries strengthen their ties, both financially and militarily.

In July, Venezuela, one of the world’s main oil producers, and Russia hatched a five-year plan whereby Russian oil companies LUKoil and Gazprom will invest up to $30 billion into Venezuela’s Orinoco Basin. Also in July, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez traveled to Russia and “purchased a number of anti-aircraft systems; three ‘Varshavianka’-class submarines; 53 helicopters; and 24 Sukhoi fighter planes, with a total price tag of $4.5 billion,” according to FrontPage magazine.

Then on September 10, two Russian Tu-160 “Blackjack” bombers arrived in Venezuela, allegedly to help patrol neutral waters in the Caribbean and Pacific. U.S. officials feared that the planes could have been carrying nuclear weapons; the Russian air force initially substantiated these accusations but then backtracked.

The Venezuelan government also released a statement saying that the conflict in Georgia was “planned, prepared, and ordered” by the United States in an “incitement of violence,” FrontPage reports.

This all comes amid increasing hostility between the United States and Venezuela. On Sept. 11, Chavez demanded that the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela leave the country. He claimed that the ambassador was complicit in a plot to assassinate him, but he also said his actions were to show solidarity with Bolivian president Evo Morales. Morales had expelled the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia earlier that day, accusing him of aiding the opposition movement in the country. Both ambassadors have denied the charges.

U.S.-Latin American tension traces its roots to the Cold War, when the area was used as “chessboard” between the United States and the Soviet Union, according to Agence France-Presse. Since then, “left-wing ideology” has continued to take hold in the region that strives for “affluence and modernity.”

The United States declared its hegemony over Latin America in the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. The AFP claims that the United States used that doctrine to assert its control during the Cold War and, because of this, Latin American countries “are determined to have full sovereign control over their affairs.” The news agency lays out where each Latin American nation fits in the diplomatic landscape: “Currently, the moderate left wing of the region includes Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. The left-wing includes Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador. The United States’ main allies in Latin America are Colombia, which receives five billion dollars a year to fight the illegal narcotics trade, and Mexico. It also has good relations with Costa Rica.”

The Russia–Venezuela alliance isn’t the only concern in the region for the United States. Iran, one of the primary foes of the Untied States, has become a major player in South America. Earlier this month, Bolivian President Evo Morales traveled to Tehran to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Morales also opted to relocate Bolivia’s only embassy in the Middle East from Cairo to Tehran, the Diplomatic Courier writes. Iran has said it will invest more than $1 billion to Bolivia’s natural gas industry.

Ahmadinejad’s relationship with Venezuela has also improved. Chavez has traveled to Iran for “no less than six visits” with the Iranian president. According to the Diplomatic Courier, “Iran has expressed no misgivings about nurturing alliances with very Catholic countries like Bolivia or Venezuela, illustrating that despite the Islamist rhetoric, policy makers in Tehran are making pragmatic calculations.”

Russia’s actions in Venezuela serve two purposes for Chavez and Morales, according to the Los Angeles Times: provoking the United States “distracts domestic attention from their disastrous policies and could, they hope, produce an overreaction in kind from Washington that would further their interests.” The Times claims that Morales is currently fighting with affluent white landowners who oppose his policy of redistributing the nation’s wealth. And, although Chavez is still popular in Venezuela, the country has a 34 percent inflation rate and there is “intensified scrutiny of his incompetent domestic policies.” Congress should not overreact to the situation in Latin America by cutting trade, the Times argues, because doing so would only solidify opposition to the United States in Bolivia and Venezuela.

Kathy Shaidle of FrontPage magazine agrees. “Ultimately, though,” she writes, “the biggest loser in this game of geo-political shadowboxing is Venezuela. With economic peril looming … the Chavez government’s posturing is a distraction from the serious challenges facing Venezuela.”

Mary Anastasia O’Grady of The Wall Street Journal asserts that Russia’s recent intervention in South America should not be feared as if this were still the Cold War. “Vladimir Putin has been trying to rebuild his military, but it is no match for U.S. might. Nor is it believable that Russia seriously expects to challenge the U.S. in the Caribbean with the flotilla it says that it is sending next month for joint exercises with Venezuela.”

But Tony Karon, senior editor at Time.com, takes a somewhat different perspective in an op-ed published in the United Arab Emirates publication The National. He says the American news media blew the situation out of proportion when Russia sent bombers to Venezuela. There is no “new Cold War” because “there’s no ideological basis for the alliance between the self-styled socialist Venezuelan leader and the Islamists in Tehran or the nationalists in Moscow; simply a common antipathy towards the US and a shared interest in keeping oil prices high. During the Cold War there were two world economies, and you were part of either one or the other.” Now only one world economy exists, and they are so inextricably connected that business takes precedence.